Okay… sorry, this chapter will not be about the rest oft he family, since they'll get enough spcae in the last chapter. But there are other people that spent parts of their lives with Jamie – and they also have to realize that his life has ended, and theirs therefore have changed.

Deadly incident involving the arrestment of Mafia-Boss: Rookie-Officer Jamison Reagan (26) killed on duty.
The world backed away. She watched herself sitting down at her desk, saw her hands shaking but didn't feel a thing. The voices of her colleagues ebbed down to a humming she didn't understand anymore, and the words on the screen – she had to have misread them! And it would be easier to reread them if it wasn't for the tears forming in her eyes. Sydney put her hand up to her face to wipe them away, her fingers still numb.
She had known this could happen. That was one of the reasons she had left him in the first place. She had left him because she hadn't felt good anymore, being bond to a man who clearly had wife and family erased out of his plan for the next ten years.
She had left him because it wouldn't be right for either of them. Through many sleepless nights Sydney had asked herself if what she had done – escape by running forward – was the right thing, and for every night but three the answer had been yes. As much as she loved the man she had got to known in Harvard – handsome, intelligent, passionate, humorous, kind – she couldn't follow him on this path. It was the right thing to leave him, for his sake so he'd be free to follow in his brother's footsteps and…. God. He had followed Joe to the point.
As she heard herself starting to sob the world set in again, loud and hot around her. She mustn't cry. Not here, not now. All these feelings, her tears… they didn't belong to her world anymore.

"Syd, you're okay?" Out of nowhere came the voice of Hannah Wood, private investigator of the house and Sydney's angel in the first months here.
"Yeah, of course." She had always been good at smiling, but Hannah was too good in her own job. Obviously not believing she moved closer to Sydney. "Don't you lie to me, hun, what's…"
"Morning, ladies!" Sydney jerked as Andrew walked in, Hannah's brother – and the man she had flirted and slept with for the last three weeks.
Did that make him her boyfriend?

The mere thought made Sydney shudder, and she couldn't help crying openly now.
"Syd! Baby, what's wrong?" Immediately Andrew was at her side and hugged her, his face turned away from the screen that still shouted Jamie Reagan's death out into the world.
"It's okay" he murmured soothingly, "everything's okay, there's nothing we can't settle, is it?"
She almost laughed at that. Of course – the first time she had met Andrew, she had been crying, too. Because her boss was an asshole, because having graduated from Harvard didn't seem to help at all, because it had been one of those nights that ended with "no".
Though Sydney was sure she had seen contempt in Hannah's eyes, then, both of the siblings had comforted her. They had helped her through all of it, and by now her life here was perfect. She had a lot of good colleagues, some fewer real friends, she had a new apartment after all, her boss had finally stopped bugging her – "my gosh… no!" She wound out of Andrew's arms, getting the bigger picture like a puzzle slowly fitting together.
"Sydney, what's wrong?" Hannah's voice was less gentle now, partly because she was very, very protective of Andrew, partly because of the typical American way to get emotional about everything that she so disliked.

Sydney didn't answer. She stood right before the screen now, seeing clearly what lay behind her but unsure what to do next. If she left this place, Andrew would read that it was the news about her ex-fiancé that had upset her so. If she stayed, they would force her to speak it out, or to try lying to them.

And it didn't matter at all.

"I'm sorry", Sydney whispered, looking at Andrew. "I'm really very sorry. I didn't know it myself."
"You didn't know what?" Andrew was so much more patient than his sister, but still it sounded wrong. It felt wrong.
She didn't want Andrew to comfort her. Just as she hadn't wanted Matt to flirt with her, it had had nothing to do with him being her boss and her being only a secretary then. It wasn't her brain that had refused those men, it was her heart, her stupid heart she had carried so far only to realized that Jamie still held all of it.

Sydney finally moved back and left the bureau, leaving Andrew and Hannah to read the news, or maybe they didn't, she didn't care. As she stepped into the elevator she realized the last time she had done so with her hands shaking.
Jamie had called, then.

Jamie. Sydney saw him right before her now, the night he had proposed to her. She had never been so happy in her entire life.

She had left him to protect herself from the pain it would bring to lose him on the job – to protect herself from seeing him dead and having to bury him like they had buried Joe.
"The hurt echoes down the generations", Linda had told her. It never stopped. And everyday she would have been afraid for Jamie's life, that was more than Sydney could have imagined bearing.

Now she knew there were worse things. And she knew that all her running away had only made it worse, because now she had even lost the right to grieve for him.
The right to love him, which she still did.

Sydney loved Jamie, that was the red line beneath all her plans – becoming a stat attorney here and getting used to hard cases so she wouldn't need any support from him, and then, after five or even ten years – coming home. Returning to New Returning to New York, to her home.
Every time she had pictured it in her mind, somehow it was clear to her that she would meet Jamie again. She didn't need to hurry, someday somehow they'd find each other again. And she'd make it up for leaving him, and he'd make it up for not being there for her.
Maybe they ended up being best friends, both of them not getting married. Or maybe – after ten years of protesting from Danny – they'd get married after all.

When Sydney had left her fiancé, she had left the possibility of him getting killed on duty, too. It was so much easier to forget about the danger when you're miles away from them. Besides – for the past eleven months she had been convinced to be over Jamie. She didn't need him where she was right now. He would wait for her at home.

Sydney left the elevator and the building, going out to a street that still was foreign to her.
Jamie was dead. He was really gone, not only out of her life, but – for real. He was dead. He was everywhere right now, his smile blossoming up in her memory, the warmth of his arms around her, his shy voice as he knelt down before her – but he was gone.

Sydney buried her face in her hands, nails dugging deep into her cheeks to forget, forget every bad word she had said to him, forget the hurt in her eyes, forget the Reagans that hated her, forget that Jamie was dead, forget it…

She would never come home to him.

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Okay…I didn't plan Sydney's part to be that long. Actually I wanted to add some thoughts about Renzulli to this chapter, but since it's developed that way, maybe he'll get a chapter of his own, too. Not sure yet. Anyway, as always, I hope you liked it, and reviews are very appreciated!